Once in a while

Have you ever been avid Niel Diamond listener? Well from my teen age I have been and listening to his beautiful melodious voice and captivating lyrics still resound in my memories. 

And once in a while I listen to one of his popular songs: Once in a while. And when I do, the beautiful lyrics of the song take me into my nostalgic past - a time when we five brothers lived our childhood and later the teenage with our loving parents. I t wasn't long that we all parted in search of our future leaving the two most beautiful people that ever came to my life - my parents. And since then, it was only an occasional calling on as the dictates of our employments could not afford us longer stints with them.

And then time started to pass by faster than we could imagine - we had our families as once our parents had. And age started to set in we were growing in our age while our parents was growing old, fragile and then days came when the took their heavenly flights one after the other - leaving behind the nostalgia that still clings to my memory: those 78 RPM His Master Voice recodes and the gramophone that my father had and from it we listened to the English songs of 1950s and thereafter till the age of LPs came, or going to school making friends and then our father taking us to Shezan, a local thriving restaurent, on our birthdays and in the process making us learn the table etiquettes when in a hotel and even how to address a waiter and registering an order.

There is much more to say that keep coming back from memory hard disk every once in a while till my eldest brother Gul Hameed Bhatti, a renowned cricket journalist and analyst, and our dear sister in law Razia Bhatti, of Herald Tribune, later the Herald and then founder of the Newsline - famous English magazine of Pakistan, also took their buses to heavens. And leaving behind their memories forever with us brothers and their children and the people who knew them.

The presnt is becasue of the parents, siblings, friends and people we once had and knew. And when they are no more, it is only peeping back in our past and reminisicing the memories of the days when everyone was around - when life had parents and when life was fun. So do look back in your past once in a while frequently for it is those days which are trasure of life.

If you care, you may now lsiten to the beautiful song that complelled me to write this post:

Photo: My family (less the fifth brother who wasn't around when this photo was taken i 1978 - Lahore).
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